Chingo got mo money than bingos

FROM September 17, 2004

Here, he explains why.

Excerpt: "If you can pump something that they’re fiending for and it doesn’t destroy the community, that’s gangster right there. People laugh about it. They say, oh, tamales, oh how funny, but tamales is big business. I mean you can be at the courthouse, trying to pay your ticket, and there can be an old lady right there with an igloo, and she probably making more money than the court, and the lawyer. She’s bein nice, giving you your change, and then she goes across the street to the gas station and makes another quick hundred dollars. By the time noon come around, she got two grand in her pocket. 52 year old lady named Luisa and she just bought a Hummer. How she get a Hummer? She sell tamales, what?"

For my part, I wouldn't be here were it not for Escobedo tortillas and St Mary's Bingo. The way Chingo Bling combines the iconic parts of first and second-gen Mexican American cultura in 2004 is genius. He embodies it, with his tamales, botas, roosters and his pick-up and his hip-hop girls and mouth bling; he is the line between preservation of identity and cultural assimilation. Los Lonely Boys and their burrito theory can't step to this. Even South Park Mexican was mostly just repping the sweet. (Although you can't deny lyrics like "This for my Raza/ I got a beer panza/ I just burned my fingers trying to smoke a cucaracha.")

New York, don't forget Mexican Independence Day Parade this Sunday, 11 am, on Madison between 41st and 23rd (for you parade freaks, the African-American Day Parade starts at 2 pm on Adam Clayton Powell between 111th and 142nd streets).